Salvador Moyà-Solà

Institut Català de Paleontologia

Life & Medical Sciences

PhD in Geological Sciences by the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona in 1983. Researcher of the Institute of Paleontology M. Crusafont from 1985 to 2005. ICREA Research Professor in the Unit of Biological Anthropology of the Faculty of Biosciences of the Universitat Autònoma of Barcelona in 2006. ICREA Research Professor and Director of the Catalan Institute of Palaeontology (Bellaterra-Sabadell) since 2006. He participates in several national and international projects, among them the RHOI Project (Revealing Hominid Origin Initiative, directed by Dr. T.D. White from the University of California at Berkeley (USA). He has published more that 300 papers in journals like Science, Nature, PNAS, Trends in Ecology and Evolution, Brain Behaviour and Evolution, Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, American Journal of Anthropology, and many others.

Research interests

My main research interest is Hominoid (Primates) evolution in the context of the Neogene climatic change, considering faunistic and paleoecological context. The main objective is to reconstruct their evolutionary history, in particular the origin and first radiation of this group. This discussion currently tackles the question of the role of the Mediterranean area as the cradle of Hominidae (great ape and human clade) and of the two main clades that form this group, the Asian (Pongo) and the African one (Pan, Gorilla and Homo). The Vallès-Penedès Neogene basin yields an outstanding record between 15 and 8 Ma that permits to reconstruct the 7 million years of evolution of this group on the European continent. Currently the interest is centred on the section of Els Hostalets de Pierola (Anoia, Barcelona). The final objective is to determine if Hominoids, as currently defined, is a monophyletic group or they're originated independently from more primitive non-orthograde forms.